The Daily Life of Farming and Raising Children in Ancient Mountain Residences

Chapter 8

As soon as they heard it was about cutting hemp, the eyes of the two children lit up!

“I know where there is some; I’ll lead the way!”

Shen Ning also exclaimed joyfully, “I’ll go get a stick; I can beat hemp too!”

For children, the most fun is to mess around.

Even if they didn’t see any results, just seeing Sang Luo leading them around to do various things, the two children, despite feeling doubtful, started to feel a sense of security and excitement.

One on each side, they eagerly prepared to go.

When Sang Luo mentioned wild hemp, she was actually referring to ramie, which people use to weave fabric nowadays.

Since a lot of mulberry and hemp were artificially planted at this time, each household would have a few fields of mulberry and hemp. The silk, cotton, and hemp cloth produced were partly handed over to the court and partly for household use.

Things like silk and cotton, farmers wouldn’t use for themselves; they would usually send them to the county in exchange for money. Sometimes, these items were directly used as hard currency, and bartering was also common. Farmers were busy from the beginning to the end of the year, and they were willing to wear only rough hemp clothes.

With some of the mulberry and hemp being artificially planted, there naturally were also wild, ownerless ones. When the Shen family divided their property, they didn’t even allocate a single field for mulberry and hemp planting. At this moment, Sang Luo could only set her sights on the wild hemp growing in the wild.

During the five years she lived in the mountains in her previous life, when she wasn’t tormented by illness, Sang Luo was quite good at finding ways to entertain herself. Of course, to some extent, it was also self-sufficiency.

Thanks to cell phones, the internet, and the elderly who stayed in the mountains with her, she learned a lot. Occasionally, when she learned a certain craft, she would record it as a video and upload it to a certain video website. Managing a small account was quite lively. It was also a way to stay connected with society, another form of entertainment, and most importantly, it brought in some income.

Among the things she learned, one of them was the old craft of weaving.

In fact, not only could she do it, but the original owner of her body could as well.

Of course, now Sang Luo was naturally not taking the two younger ones to cut hemp in order to weave fabric. She had almost nothing now, and she didn’t have the ability to weave fabric either. Every household in the village had a weaving machine, but they were all used by the women of the house, and she couldn’t borrow one.

Cutting hemp upon return could only be for some rough processing. Up to the point of spinning yarn, Sang Luo planned to use the well-spun yarn to exchange for one or two basins in the market. After all, she still wanted to earn some food by selling fairy tofu. Although there were plenty of materials in the mountains and no shortage of plant ash, with just one jar and three bowls at home, how much could she produce? It wasn’t enough to fill their own stomachs.

These days, she couldn’t do any heavy work, so sitting at home and spinning hemp was just right. The two kids could also help.

…

The two siblings were indeed very familiar with the relatively safe mountains in and around the village. They were describing where wild hemp could be found to Sang Luo as they led her from one place to another.

Because they were heading towards the village, they occasionally met villagers on the road who looked at Sang Luo with curiosity.

The village knew about the Shen family’s division of property, but whether it was before or after the division, the Sang family rarely appeared in the village. However, during this period, it was heard that Shen An and Shen Ning occasionally went to Shen San’s house to beg for food, indicating that they were running out of food.

Seeing Sangluo coming out now, the people they met on the road were all curious. Those who were familiar with Shen An and Shen Ning would exchange a few words with the two kids and then leave, muttering about going to cut hemp.

Not recognizing these people, Sang Luo didn’t know what they were thinking, and even if she did, she wouldn’t care.

They soon reached their first destination. Cutting hemp wasn’t very tiring. Before the division, the two kids had also done this job in their family’s hemp fields, so they didn’t need Sang Luo’s instructions. They were even more skilled than Sang Luo at this task.

However, Sang Luo’s physical condition was too weak now. After all, the original owner had lost her life to illness. Although she had drunk salt-sugar water and had some rice porridge after putting on this body, in fact, she had only had a few mouthfuls of each. After being busy for half the morning, she really couldn’t do strenuous work like cutting hemp for long. After a while, she gradually found it difficult to exert force, and her hands began to tremble slightly.

Shen An noticed and simply stopped asking her to help. The siblings quickly cut a large area, and Shen An cut two bundles of hemp himself. Then the three of them carried it back home.

After they got home, naturally, those two bundles were not enough. They couldn’t get much hemp out of them. But Shen An didn’t ask Sang Luo to make another trip: “These are all common places where village kids play. An Ning and I can go by ourselves. Sister-in-law, you stay home and rest.”

Shen Ning glanced at her sister-in-law’s complexion, hesitated for a moment, and suggested, “Should we also dissolve the malt sugar that Grandma Chen gave us and drink it?”

Drinking two pieces of sugar in one day was an extremely luxurious thing, and they hadn’t dared to do it even during the New Year. But Shen Ning hadn’t forgotten her sister-in-law’s scary appearance yesterday. Sugar and such things were more important than her sister-in-law.

Sang Luo wasn’t worried about the two kids cutting hemp on the outskirts of the village. She nodded: “Okay, you go cut the hemp, and I’ll start stripping it at home.”

As for eating the malt sugar first, she knew her own situation and didn’t need to rush: “We don’t need to rush to eat the sugar. It’ll come in handy later. Wait until you two bring back a few more bundles of hemp, and then we’ll eat it together.”

Adding some sugar to the fairy tofu, the two kids would be pleasantly surprised when they ate it later.

Shen Ning didn’t catch the implication behind her sister-in-law’s words; she only heard her sister-in-law saying they would eat together as a group of three.

Thinking about the taste of the salt-sugar water she had in the early morning, she subconsciously swallowed and then felt embarrassed about being so greedy. She quickly shook her head and said, “I don’t need it.”

How could she grab her sister-in-law’s sugar water when she wasn’t sick or in pain?

Sang Luo smiled and let the two children go cut hemp, while she sat on a stone outside the house and started stripping the hemp.

Having food to eat after finishing work was the best motivation there could be.

The two children quickly went down the mountain and returned with two large bundles of hemp after about an hour.

When the siblings went out again to find another place to cut hemp, Sang Luo put down the task of stripping the hemp for the time being. She went into the house, picked up the jar, fetched some spring water from the mountain, placed it on the stove, lit a fire, and melted the malt sugar given by Mrs. Chen.

This time, she didn’t add salt to make salt-sugar water. She simply made it into sugar water and then turned off the fire. She used a few thick leaves as pads to carry the jar to the stone platform. She let the sugar water cool down while she checked the solidification of the two bowls of fairy leaf juice.

It was pretty good; the proportion of plant ash water was appropriate, and it had already solidified.

When Shen An and Shen Ning returned for the third time, Sang Luo looked at the sun and didn’t let them go out again. She put down the hemp she was stripping and called out to the two of them, “Go wash your hands, then wash your face, and then come into the house to eat something delicious.”

Eating something delicious.

To Shen An and Shen Ning, this sounded like a dream.

Since their eldest brother left home, they hadn’t heard such words again.

But remembering that their sister-in-law had said they would drink malt sugar water together earlier, the two kids hurried to wash their hands.

When the three of them entered the house again, without Sang Luo saying anything, the two siblings naturally looked at the stone platform that served as the table. When they saw the two bowls of shimmering green substance on the table, they both froze.

What’s this???

The bowls were still the same, and the color was still the same, no, the color of this substance was even deeper now, a vibrant green.

Shen An and Shen Ning stared at Sang Luo in disbelief, “Sister-in-law, could this be the leaf juice from earlier?”

Sang Luo smiled. “That’s right, I said it was edible. Let me cut it into pieces for you to taste.”

Saying that, she took the bamboo piece used to hold the malt sugar earlier and began to cut one of the bowls of tofu. 

Yes, this bamboo piece was the one Shen An had someone help him shave to use as a knife. Although it usually didn’t come in handy, most of the time they ate wild vegetable soup, which they could simply tear apart with their hands.

Sang Luo skillfully cut the bowl of fairy tofu into small pieces about two centimeters square. Then, she scooped out the cooled malt sugar water from the jar and poured it into the bowl. She didn’t pour much—just two spoonfuls—and lightly stirred it. She then scooped up one of the pieces and offered it to Shen Ning’s mouth, saying, “An Ning, try it first.”

The jade-like substance, soft and elastic, shimmered on the wooden spoon.

The two siblings had never seen anything so beautiful before. Even before tasting it, just looking at it made their mouths water.

Shen Ning wasn’t worried anymore about whether it was edible or not. With the fragrant aroma already teasing her nostrils, she accepted the wooden spoon from Sang Luo’s hand and placed it in her mouth.

The sweetness, the fragrance, the refreshing texture, the flavor… “Wow!”

“Brother, this tastes even better than the meat we had on New Year’s Day!!!”